The Wet Collections, Natural History Museum

by James Glazebrook

Visiting the Wet Collections in the Museum für Naturkunde is a little like that scene in Alien: Resurrection when Ripley happens upon a room full of freakish alien experiments in jars. The fact that the one million specimens were collected here on Earth doesn’t stop them appearing other-worldly in their glowing jars of ethanol, and some of them downright facehugger-y. The climate-controlled conditions in the museum’s East Wing, completed in September 2010, mean that you even have to go through a kind of airlock to get to it. Berlin’s Natural History Museum is fast establishing itself as a rival to those in London and New York, but we advise you to stride straight past its main attraction – the largest mounted skeleton in the world – and marvel at the mad creatures we share the planet with today.

The wet room wasn’t open yet when I went in there last year and made a video about it. Fortunately, they already had some “wet specimen” in the old wing, which were the visual highlights, together with that very badly stuffed spotted cat. And I even showed the door to the still closed wing. Will have to go back now!http://youtu.be/4JGlDYat6no?hd=1

Thanks! Great video – was that Scott smacking his head off some glass?!

I like the museum, but the stuffed animals get boring after a while. I want someone to do a mashup of a natural history museum and a zoo, so you can learn about the origins of the animals you’re looking at. Maybe that’s just a good zoo, but I’ve never been to one that does that…

It’s easy to miss! Head straight to the back, hang a right before the dioramas and head to the end of that corridor. The “airlock” is on your right. Well worth the price of admission alone – spectacular.